The suspected shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was reportedly targeting Trump officials in attendance on Saturday evening in Washington, DC.
Sources told the New York Post the suspect, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, admitted to police he had zeroed in on “administration officials” who were at the event inside the Washington Hilton hotel, the outlet reported Sunday.
However, authorities have been unable to determine if his main target was President Donald Trump, who was there with his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
“He was trying to just breach his way in and take whoever he could,” one law enforcement source explained to the outlet.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said preliminary findings regarding the investigation into the incident suggested the man was targeting administration officials that “likely” included President Trump, according to the BBC.
Video footage showed the moments Trump and his wife were seated onstage when loud booms were heard just outside the ballroom. Moments later, officers whisked the couple from the room to safety:
Additional footage caught the moment an official grabbed Vice President JD Vance, who was seated near the president, and escorted him offstage:
The suspect reportedly charged through a magnetometer and shot at a U.S. Secret Service agent, Breitbart News reported. The president offered remarks to the press after the dinner was canceled, saying the agent who was shot in the chest was wearing a bulletproof vest at the time and was doing “great” after the fact.
While speaking during the news conference, Blanche said charges were expected to be filed soon.
“The charges should be self-evident, given the conduct, but as you’ll hear, there will be multiple charges around the shooting, around the possession of firearms, and anything else that we can get on this guy,” he said. “The investigation is obviously ongoing and just started. There is federal law enforcement already working on search warrants and doing their job, and I don’t want to get ahead of them, and don’t want to get ahead of the work that they’re doing.”
“Even as we speak, Director Patel and I were just on the crime scene a short while ago, and everybody in this room should rest assured that the Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI, Secret Service, everybody’s on the scene doing their job,” he added.
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